I once played a game where I didn’t land on a property to buy for like three trips around the board. I finally ended up with a green or yellow and a railroad before being wiped out.
When I was a child, we spent summers at a place that got all of one TV channel. Days were spent in the lake, exploring the area, water skiing, fishing, and other fun things, but nights were spent playing games, because the one TV channel had never had anything of interest.
When I was nine, I had to learn contract bridge, to provide a fourth in case my father didn’t feel like playing. Rummoli and crokinole were favourites, as was hearts. And then, there was Monopoly.
Published rules be damned. You’ve got one green property but not all green properties? Big deal, build a house on it anyway. Land on Free Parking? Pick up the cash in the middle. And so on. We played until we got bored of it, and decided to play another game. And our Monopoly games would go over two, three, four nights; the board and cash just left until the next night. No winner was ever declared, but none needed to be: we had staved off nighttime boredom for one more night.
We used to just make the reserve price, i.e. minimum bid, the face value so if only one person wanted it at auction then they couldn’t get it cheap.
One of the Board Game YouTube channels did an interesting video about Monopoly from a Hobby Board game perspective (in the hobby Monopoly is the poster child for “bad traditional board games”)
That was interesting.
Needs editing, but I agree-- except, I really like Monopoly.
I like Clue even better, though.
There’s a computer version of Monopoly which I enjoy. (It’s ‘Monopoly Plus’ on Steam.)
Sadly many families play ‘home rules’ versions of the game, which usually take much longer and remove most of the skill.
The key thing is to play the original rules, especially auctioning off any property that is not immediately bought when landed on.
Hated it as a kid, would hate it now if I played it.
Did anyone ever play Catopoly or Dogopoly?
I do love Uno though.
Catopoly is the one where, whenever anyone rolls doubles, you knock the whole board, all the pieces, and all of the money off of the table, right? Or, well, any other time you feel like it.
I’ve played and loved monopoly for more than 60 years. And I thought I knew and followed every rule. Fie on piling up money in free parking! But I must confess I never knew about the auction rule. Guess I really do need to read the fine print after all.
Monopoly, even when played properly, is a badly designed game because the luck factor is so high and eliminated players have nothing to do. That doesn’t mean that European style games are inherently better or anything. Personally, I don’t like highly asymmetric games where every player has to play the game differently because that rewards having a deep knowledge of everything every player can or should do. It’s a problem with lots of engine building games too.
Although an avid game player I have not played Monopoly in decades. When playing the game I make sure all the players play strickly by the rules otherwise I will excuse myself.
If a variant must be played I recommend this expansion from Parker Brothers: https://www.hasbro.com/common/instruct/StockExchangegame.pdf It was reprinted by Chessex in the ninties and now commands collectors’ prices.
I like looking at all of the Monopoly versions and seeing, for any given setting, who or what has enough prestige to earn the right to be the substitute for Boardwalk and who or what gets the dubious honor of replacing Mediterranean Avenue. Right now, I’m looking at the one they did for my alma mater, the University of Kentucky. My beloved college newspaper is where Vermont Avenue normally would be, which honestly is better than I remembered.